


The Last Time I Saw Richard

by SEF



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Immortality, Paris (City), Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22567384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SEF/pseuds/SEF
Summary: Richie knows there's no winning the Game, Darius believes there is no Game, Duncan uses the Game to administer justice, and Methos just...goes on. Who is the realist?
Relationships: Angie Burke/Richie Ryan, Duncan MacLeod & Richie Ryan
Comments: 16
Kudos: 35





	The Last Time I Saw Richard

**Author's Note:**

> For Stan Kirsch, who gave Richie life. Thank you, Stan. Here is your song from me.
> 
> [The Last Time I Saw Richard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igj20M84hbo) is the final song on Joni Mitchell's iconic Blue album.
> 
> I'm working on a [podfic](https://archive.org/download/ready-last-time_202102/ReadyLastTime.mp3).

* * *

St. Joseph’s Chapel, Paris, 1993

“Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit,” Darius murmured. “In your mercy, take, I beg, all those I carry with me. Forgive us our grievous sins, and—” He felt the tickle down his spine that heralded a pre-immortal and rose quickly from the cold stone floor.

“Ah, Richard.” Duncan’s protege padded a few steps into the nave and halted.

Darius chided himself. He should not have been seeking comfort for himself when Duncan and this boy needed his prayers.

“Come back to my study,” he urged. “We’ll appreciate the fire today. And a drink.”

Richie didn’t come. He gnawed on his lower lip for a bit and then shoved his hands into the pockets of his virulent green jacket. “Mac made me come. He thinks I don’t know why.”

 _Oh, no._ Darius approached and lightly clasped Richie’s arms. “Then come, my friend, and we’ll wait together.”

Richie jerked a nod.

Darius nodded in affirmation before turning toward his quarters. “I think you’ll like my brew,” he tossed over his shoulder. “I’ve had a long time to perfect it.” He was rewarded with a soft snort.

At the hearth, Richie grimaced at the chessboard but sat and took Duncan’s side.

“You don’t play?”

“As if.” He flushed. “Sorry. Nope.”

“Today is not a day for learning, I think.” Darius transferred the board to his desk and replaced it with two tankards. “I’ll just be a moment.”

In the cool alcove that served as his kitchen, he drew a pitcher of beer from a barrel and pondered. How could he keep Richie safely on holy ground for what might be a long afternoon? Centuries of experience with impatient young men did not bode well.

Again Darius chastised himself. _Here is an endangered soul, as well as a body, that God and Duncan have entrusted me with. Time is short, not long._

He bustled back to the hearth to fill their tankards. “Try this.” Richie waited politely for Darius to sit before he took a sip. “It is not like your American beer.”

“No.” Richie’s scowl mutated. “It’s good.”

“Ha. I am pleased.”

They drank in companionable silence for a few minutes. Richie’s curious gaze wandered up to the stone arches above and then surveyed the books, heavy candelabra, armillary sphere, and other peculiar artifacts of Darius’s life.

Darius took the opportunity to examine Duncan’s charge. In his brightly colored clothes Richie resembled a tropical parrot, recalling something, someone.... Darius warmed when the picture shifted into view: Fitz and Duncan in one of their carousing phases, all swagger and costume. Now he understood a little better why Duncan had taken this one under his wing.

As if in protest, Richie rose to take off the jacket. He turned his back and held his hands to the fire. “So you think he’ll be OK?”

A beat passed before Darius spoke. “Nothing can be certain, but I believe the risk is low. Cariveau is a weak man and not highly skilled. Duncan would ignore him if he were not also an abuser of women and children.” With a special taste for pre-immortals, something Richie certainly did not need to know.

“Shit.” Richie stepped closer to the fire. “I mean _merde.”_ Then he laughed and dramatically shook out his arms and hands in an attempt to hide his distress.

Darius closed his eyes. Mistreatment was of course commonplace among foundlings, immortal or not. Duncan was an exception. Clearly Richie was not.

Richie clutched the mantel as if preparing to bang his head against it. He laughed again. “Always the hero.”

The poor child. Duncan had left him in the dark, but thankfully not alone.

Darius cleared his throat and spoke firmly. “That is how Duncan makes sense of his life,” he said. “He will always protect his clan. Which can prove trying for his friends.”

Richie plunked back into his chair with a sigh. “Yeah. I guess so.” He fiddled with his tankard, swiping it back and forth across the small tabletop. “But how can you stand it? Just waiting around a church when you’re more powerful than anybody?”

My. They’d gotten to the heart of the matter rather quickly. “Ah. That is a long story indeed.” Should he tell it? Darius had shared his life story with any immortal who was willing to listen, but Richie existed in some twilight state, neither mortal nor immortal. A little learning might prove a dangerous thing.

But unfortunately, Richie already had more knowledge than he ought. Mind made up, Darius said, “We had best have another drink.”

Richie did the honors. Darius took a long draught and planned some judicious editing.

“I was born somewhere in the stretch between what we now call Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Of my parents, I know nothing. I was raised by people who had claimed me as one of the spoils of war from some ravaged village. Children, especially male children, were useful and thus valued. Hunger and disease dogged us, but I was not unhappy. For whatever reason, I was taller and stronger than my fellows, and so I often led our small skirmishes with the tribes who would have taken our food and our children. I believe I was close to 40 when I finally fell to the axe.”

Richie hitched his chair forward. “And came back to life.”

“Yes. My people had a wonderful knowledge of herbs, but no other medicine. It was obvious I could not have survived the blow I took. Yet minutes from my death I was alive and well.”

“They musta thought you were some kinda...devil.”

“Worse: a god. Though in truth there was little difference in their minds. When they discovered I could heal from any injury, I was poked and clobbered for days. In time, life returned to its normal rhythms. I could not be defeated in battle, but apparently I had no other great powers. Few even noticed that I did not age, because they aged and died so quickly themselves.”

Richie was chewing on his knuckles now, fully engaged in the story.

“Most of our little band died, and we joined another. Again, I became a warrior and leader of warriors. Life became a series of transitions from patriarch of one unnamed people to another, each time the tribes growing in size and wealth. Fantastical stories spread about me, mostly untrue. But when I realized I truly could not age, I began to believe that I was, in fact, a god. I knew no other explanation.”

“But didn’t you run into any other immortals?”

Darius leaned back into his chair, remembering. “Not for a century at least. And then two, in short order. Both women, both healers. They had heard the stories and came to find me. That was when I first felt the brush of someone else’s quickening.”

“So they told you about the Game?”

“No.” Darius shook his head, adamant. “Only of their own immortality. We had no knowledge of the Game. We traveled together for a while, but their profession was the opposite of my own. They did not admire my devotion to killing.” And women with strange powers were thought to be witches, not gods.

“So how’d you find out? Did one of the bad guys come after you?”

“Not for many years. Then a man entered my tent one night. His quickening felt like…” Some dinosaur stirred inside Darius. He shivered. “Let’s just say, I knew he was like me. He had a sword, finer than I had ever seen. I taunted him because I was sure he couldn’t kill me. And do you know what he said?”

“There can be only one?”

“No, Richard. He said ‘You ignorant hick, I’m going to have your head.’ And he tried, very hard indeed, to have it. When I had beaten him, I took his sword and…”

“Paid him back.”

Darius’s head dropped. “Yes. I was capable of any brutality in those days. I took his head.” He scrubbed his hands across his face, dreading what came next.

With a kindness Darius hadn’t expected, Richie supplied the end to the anecdote. “It’s OK. I saw Mac fight Slan.”

This Darius had not known. He nodded dumbly.

“It looked like Mac was getting electrocuted. Is that what it feels like?”

Darius shrugged and reached out to touch the candelabra beside his chair. “I’ve known little electricity in my lifetime. Perhaps it is electricity that feels like a quickening.”

“Huh. Good point.” The mood lightened, Richie took a big swallow of beer. “So I still don’t get what you’re doing here.”

“As promised, a long story. You’re not bored?”

“No way.”

Darius went on, detailing the battles he had fought, the immortals encountered, women loved, empires toppled, literacy acquired and, with it, some lessons learned.

“My last great army came here to the Seine on its sweep to the sea when I was roughly 500 years old. The people here had scattered, fearful of rape and pillage, and I decided to rest here for a day or two. My men were footsore and nursing wounds though I, of course, was not. Early on the second morning I decided that I would visit the Île. My lieutenants had reported that most of the island was a shrine, and I hoped to find scripts for my collection and artifacts to add to my treasury.

“The sun was just above the horizon when I stepped onto the wooden bridge.” That dawn flashed brilliantly in memory. “There was a small stout man, an immortal, standing at the other end. When he approached me, I realized that the hum of holy ground was moving with him. That it was him. I drew my sword though I knew I could not kill him there, perhaps anywhere.

“He was unarmed, solemn but not afraid. I challenged him, dared him to come away and fight me. ‘There can be only one,’ I told him, as I then believed.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said, ‘I am Xosi, the guardian of this site. I have what you seek. Kill me now, and you may have it.’

“I thought he was defying me, Richard. I thought he was protecting a hoard of riches. Riches! And so, when he stepped off the bridge, I took his head.”

The quickening that followed was like none that Darius had experienced in his long career. Most had been violent, orgasmic, painful, explosive. This was not a baptism of fire but a baptism by water and the spirit. Darius had been transformed by its power into a different man, but he had not understood it then and he did not understand it now.

He spread his hands helplessly. “When it was over, I found myself buried in the bank of the Seine, weak as a newborn. Three of my men had to dig me out.” Methos, told of this Damascene conversion, had pointed out that it seemed less like a cloud of unknowing and more like “muddy” thinking.

“And the next day, I started constructing the foundations of this chapel. I knew I must abandon the sword. There could be no more killing for me.”

Richie appeared to share Methos’ skepticism. “But how come? If he was so powerful, he musta killed a lot of guys. Doesn't sound like a saint to me.”

“You are right. It does not make sense. I've spent many years pondering this mystery. As time passed, I came to learn that Xosi contained thousands, both mortals and immortals. And yet he had not killed in millennia. Beyond that...all I have concluded is that his power must have had another source, a source that births life.

“For that is what a quickening is, you know, the fluttering of new life in the womb. The child cannot remember the components that created it. Can the butterfly recollect the caterpillar it once was?”

“But I still don't get...why a church?”

“This,” Darius clutched the cross around his neck, “this is a matter of faith. A teacher I chose to follow—at first because Xosi had taken up his path. That is why I named the chapel after him. Joseph was a guardian of the holy family, both apart from and a part of it.”

Richie’s face scrunched up in disbelief. Well, Duncan had warned Darius that the teen was no fan of organized religion.

“Xosi and pilgrims to the Île worshipped other ways over the centuries. There are many paths, Richard.“

He was making no convert there.

“So you made your own holy ground. And got out of the Game.”

Darius wasn’t offended; he had heard this charge often enough. “Many immortals have believed that. Some even think I am biding my time, waiting for the Gathering.

“But you see, I do not believe in the Game. I have no reason to believe in it.”

Richie scoffed and gulped at his beer. “Come on. You’re an immortal. You’ve got more quickenings than anybody. How could you not believe in it?”

“To the Game, I apply reason, history, and conscience. And, on all these counts, I cannot believe.” Duncan would not thank him for these words, Darius knew.

“But you _know_ it’s real,” Richie insisted.

“Immortals are real, yes. They have long lives, healing powers, a capacity to exchange quickenings. This I know. But the Game did not exist for much of my life. I believe it to be a fantasy, one that appears romantic, heroic even. But it serves the needs of any who would kill the weak as a path to absolute power over all humanity.”

“Hey, no! That’s not Mac.” Richie’s hands balled into fists.

“No, no. Duncan uses his strength in pursuit of justice.” This was dangerous territory. Darius did not wish to undermine Richie’s admiration for his mentor. “But it was once me, Richard. With or without a Game, there was always a struggle for power, a glorification of strength and cruelty, constant war. This is still true today, for many.”

“Which is why you gotta fight! Why are you hiding out in a _church?”_

There was something in his voice that Darius didn’t understand. He made a note to ask Duncan about it later. “I have often left my refuge over the years. But in recent times this story, of the Gathering...it is a great temptation to sin for any immortal who seeks the power they believe I hold. I wish to deny that to anyone, if I can.”

Richie plainly didn’t think much of that excuse.

“And here I can pray unceasingly for a true change in whatever man I am apart from these ghosts I carry. Just as I dread losing my head to another, I also dread taking another quickening. I fear it might alter me again.”

Richie silently contemplated this dilemma.

“Though it is uncommon for quickenings to have such power,” Darius added. As the boy was in Duncan’s orbit, he must be cautioned explicitly. “But taking a quickening is always disorienting. The energy is primal, often violent. You must always keep your distance, Richard.”

“Hmm.” Richie looked glum, and perhaps not as concerned as he might have been. “Don’t you feel trapped, though? I mean, how’re you ever going to leave?”

“All things change. For now, it is a blessing that other immortals believe this place to be safe. So I can meet them, listen, comfort if I can. And, of course, I also serve the people of this parish, who have accepted my strange ways. It is good for me to be bound to their lives. Laughter, suffering, good and evil: these remind me every day that I am part of humanity, not set apart from it.”

“Man.” Richie nudged his tankard toward Darius. “First you sound like Mac, then you sound crazy different, now you sound like him again. It’s weird.”

Delighted, Darius laughed and refreshed Richie’s drink. “Yes, friendship is a conversation, and I am glad my friendship with Duncan has been a long one.”

And as quickly as that, distractions failed. “You think he’ll be back soon?” Richie said.

“Sword fights are seldom long. But we must allow Duncan time to recover.” Darius finished his beer. “Till then, perhaps you would kick a ball with me in our little courtyard?”

It was Darius, of course, who spotted Duncan first. The Highlander slapped open the gate to the courtyard and strode inside. His face was a stony slab, grim as a gravestone.

Darius hurried to clasp his arm. “How are you, my friend?” he said, sotto voce. “Can I help?”

“Mac!”

Darius threw out an arm, blocking Richie. The teen stopped, puzzled.

“I believe Duncan is here for confession, Richard.”

“What?” Duncan growled.

Darius put his hands on Duncan’s shoulders and pushed down with all his considerable strength. Duncan collapsed onto the cobblestones with a whoosh. “Wait here, my friend.”

Richie was agape. Darius got a firm grip on his arm and steered him to the gate. “I am grateful for your company today, Richard. Now you must go home and call Duncan’s Tessa. She will be happy to hear from you. Duncan will return soon in need of a hot meal and a long sleep. Do you understand?”

Those pale eyes blinked at him once, twice. “Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

Darius placed the palm of his hand on Richie’s forehead but did not speak his parting benediction aloud. Instead he said, “We will speak again soon. God willing.”

* * *

Burke farm, Oregon, March 2019

“You should talk to him. He tells you things he can’t tell anyone else.” Angie Burke was Richie’s oldest friend, and not because of the silver streaks in her hair. She’d known Richie even longer than Duncan.

Duncan paused on the downward stroke of the curry comb, looked up at her, and then continued with the task. “He tells you most everything, I think.”

“Not the same things.”

Duncan straightened. Angie met his gaze with neither smile nor frown. “No, I suppose not,” he said. “I’d rather hear your side of the conversation.”

He didn’t mean it as an invitation, and Angie didn’t take it that way.

“I'm afraid for him.”

Silence followed while Duncan worked on the roan. Finally he finished, patted the mare, and stowed his tools. “I’ll do what I can.”

They found Richie behind the farmhouse, attempting to hose mud off Angie’s two grandchildren as they screamed with delight. Barefoot and in overalls, they lifted their arms to the sun and danced in and out of the water. “Richie, Richie, Richie, you can’t get me!”

Richie was as muddy as the children. Inspired by their silliness, Duncan snatched the hose and slipped the nozzle down the back of Richie’s shirt.

“Aaaa! Mac!”

Nora and Teddy jumped on Richie. He flung open his arms, dropped to his knees, and tipped over into the grass. Children and water bubbled into a cacophony of high-pitched giggles.

Duncan’s worry fizzled into laughter. He laughed until he was so weak-kneed that he himself became an easy target. For a few minutes everyone tussled and chased and drenched each other until they lay breathless in the grass, enjoying the spring sunshine.

Richie turned his head and smiled at Duncan, and the mischief and love and unspoken awareness he saw in that boyish face brought hot tears to his eyes. Richie bumped his shoulder and sat up. “OK, kiddos, no one needs a bath tonight.” A cheer went up.

Duncan showed off with a graceful roll to a stand and offered Richie a hand up. “I have to get back, Rich. Time for a walk round the place, though?”

“Sure. Let me just round up these critters.” Richie stashed a kid under each arm and galloped up the stairs to the back porch, where Angie sat, her chin in her hand.

He returned grinning. “Ange must have spoken her mind, huh?”

“She’s entitled.” Angie knew full well that Duncan had once tried to kill Richie. Neither of them was ever going to forget that.

Richie tried to dry his face with a wet shirt sleeve. “It’s not you, Mac. It’s all the immortal crap. The ‘Game.’ She sounds like Tessa sometimes.”

That hurt squelched any leftover giddiness from the childsplay. Duncan gestured toward the grove of oaks at the far end of the paddock and set out along the fence. Richie followed.

“Are you happy here, Rich?”

“Happy?”

“Happy.”

“It’s the best I can do, Mac.” Richie looked pained. “I didn’t want to drag Angie into my stuff, but she needed help after Dave died. We both needed a place. Here I can play the hired hand and sleep far away in the bunkhouse. She knows what to do if a bad guy shows up. We’ve got a dozen different escape plans, and the kids aren’t usually here, and—”

“Richie! I wasn’t criticizing. I just wanted to know how you’re doing.”

Richie huffed out a breath and stared across the pasture. The stream of words slowed. “I wish she didn’t know, Mac. I’m never telling anyone again. But since she does know, we’re...we just want to use the time, you know? She worries I’ll get capped, and I worry I’ll get her killed, or yay! maybe I’ll just have to spend a hundred years without her when she’s gone. She’s the last best friend I’ll ever have.”

“Richie.” Duncan leaned back against the fence, facing Richie. He couldn’t think of any convincing argument, much less words of comfort. Promises of future love, or future life, wouldn’t help now. “Don’t say that.”

A faint smile and a shake of the head. “OK.” Richie sighed softly. “What do you think it’s all for, Mac? Do you really want to rule the world? Because I couldn’t, even if I wanted to.”

Flummoxed, Duncan struggled to frame an answer. He tipped his head back and stared at the clouds. Finally, he said, “Darius once told me that the Game was about nothing more than ‘might makes right.’ But since we’re in it, I’ve tried—often failed—but I’ve tried to make it ‘might for right.’ “

Richie cocked his head. “He thought the Game wasn’t real, you know.”

“He told you that?” The wily old evangelist. Darius couldn’t have had more than a half-dozen conversations with Richie.

Duncan smiled ruefully. “Well, I’ll tell you what I told him. It is a reality so long as immortals believe it.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said he’d have to keep teaching us to believe in something better.”

Richie mulled this over for some time. “Reality bites.”

“It certainly does.”

“C’mon.” Richie turned and headed back toward the house. The roan and her foal cantered toward them and whickered. Richie produced small green apples from seemingly nowhere, making Duncan chuckle at his variant on an immortal’s favorite magic trick.

The roan nuzzled at Richie’s tousled hair. “Mikey likes the horses,” Richie said. “It’s one reason why we bought this place.”

Was that why Angie was worried? Richie was still haunted by a quickening he’d taken thirty years ago?

Richie saw his concern and hastened to alleviate it. “It’s not a problem, Mac. Mikey doesn’t bother me. Unlike some. I was just thinking about quickenings, and Darius, and how he’s...well, he’s not a part of the Game anymore. The people who killed _him_ didn’t get to hold onto him. He’d be glad about that.”

Duncan could never see the loss of Darius or his quickening as anything but a monumental tragedy. Without him, the Game could only devolve. Without him, Duncan had no arbiter of what “right” truly was.

“Mac. Hey, Mac.” Richie gave him a nudge. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m just saying, maybe he’s free. Maybe all the people inside him are. I don’t believe in heaven, but he must have.”

Had he? Immortals had no future but an eternity inside their killers’ heads. Heaven wasn’t likely to be a topic of interest for even the most starry-eyed.

Speaking of which, Richie’s eyes were on him, patiently awaiting a response.

“I don’t know, Rich. I don’t know anywhere else he could be.”

Richie gave him that half-smile again, and Duncan was struck, hard, by the realization that it was Richie who was trying to comfort him.

He slung an arm around Richie’s neck. “I’ve got to hit the road. But I’ll be back for the lambing season, yes?”

“God willing and the creek don’t rise.”

* * *

Seacouver, April 2019

Duncan slumped in the back booth of the dark cafe that had once been Joe’s bar. The place was emptying out. A tired waitress was wiping tables, collecting candles and condiments atop the bar. On the TV, Notre Dame was burning.

He held his glass before the candle in front of him. Like it, his world was sputtering out of existence. Darius, Tessa, Joe, Richie...all gone, gone beyond. They had loved him unreservedly.

He chuffed. What a pretty lie. Their reservations had been massive, and they’d loved him anyway. To their heartache as well as his.

And damn, his head ached too.

“Have you ever noticed that taverns are the one thing that never changes?” Methos clunked a beer bottle down on the table and slid into the booth across from him.

Oh God, no. “Methos. You’re a pain—”

“In the head. So I’ve been told.” He tapped his bottle on the table. “Drink up, MacLeod. It’s closing time.”

But he didn’t want to close this chapter. God, how he didn’t want to.

Methos made a let’s roll motion with the hand that wasn't on his bottle. “This is where you say you don’t want to talk about it.”

Two days after Richie’s death, Duncan had received a package containing his rapier. Washing coffee cups in Angie’s kitchen after the funeral, he had asked her about the sword. She took the dish towel from him, wiped her hands, and said “He didn’t take it with him. He had this crazy idea that immortals are people.” Duncan had wept then, long and bitterly.

Now he pressed the whisky glass to his forehead and rolled it. “Richie was in pain, and I couldn’t help him. I didn’t.”

He waited for Methos to declaim that life is suffering, and Richie was an adult and an immortal, and no one could fight his battles for him. But Duncan would have fought that battle, gladly.

“What should I have told him? Should I have taught him...something else?”

“Would it have changed anything?”

That cut to the quick. There was no response to that.

Methos blithely ignored his devastation. “The last time I saw Richard he assured me that you were still a hopeless romantic. It’s one of the things we both enjoyed about you.”

 _Jesus._ He didn’t know if that was a compliment or a condemnation to hell. Methos’ face wasn’t telling.

“So stop mooning over your whisky. I've got a gorgeous new set of wings on the tarmac and an intriguing Watcher rumor to pursue.”

Duncan made a strangled noise.

“Don’t scoff at me, MacLeod. I’d think you might be interested.” He polished off his beer, tapping the bottle for the last drop. “There’s an explosion of pre-immortals coming of age. Paris is swarming with 'em. And here we are, two perfect sniffer dogs.”

“Paris?” Duncan’s eyes flicked to the TV screen just as the proprietor clicked it off.

“Yup, Paris. Same place where the old man was killed on holy ground.”

“Old _men.”_

Methos misunderstood. “We are indeed. Now get on your feet and blow that damn candle out.” He slithered out of the booth and headed for the exit.

Duncan drained his whisky. He cupped his hand behind the candle—paused—and said a prayer for the ones he was leaving behind. “Into your hands, O Lord.”

Into your hands.

* * *


End file.
